ASD Libraries' Annual Report: 2022-2023

We are focusing the library budget on restoring our print collection to an appropriate age and size. The One for the Books campaign (Extraordinary Budget) from last year enabled us to spend more on books than the regular budget would allow.

The libraries are gradually approaching our collection age and size goals:

The opening reception for the AP Human Geography Genocide Project was well attended by parents, faculty, and esteemed guests.

Study room B233 was transformed by senior Dyani into an art exhibit called Seven Deadly Sins. For a few weeks, students and faculty enjoyed Dyani's interpretation of the topic.

After school sewing club in action.

Giant Scrabble game

  Knitting pursuit

Puzzles and Games

Chess

The HS Library Advisory Council was a small but active group this year. They posted regularly to the library's Instagram account, ran a short story context, and held two poetry slams.

Six of the ES top ten most popular titles were written by our visiting author Tracey Baptiste!

Liz Strootman (HS English) and Linda Hoiseth (HS Library) are researching the reading habits of the ASD HS students. Next year they will work with Ken Simonds (Learning Data Specialist) to look for correlations between time spent reading and academic success indicators, and try to find ways to increase the amount of time students spend reading. For now, here's some raw data:

Most of their reading time is spent on social media, messages, or school work.

Most students enjoy reading but feel they don't have enough time to read. They prefer print books over other formats.

Most students read less than 30 minutes per week for pleasure, but spend more than 30 minutes per week doing required reading. They would read more if they had time, and they think they should be reading more than they do. 

G6    Caison B 
G7    Jared F
G8    Camilla L
G9    Denise B
G10    Indira P
G11    Anika B
G12    Omar S

2022-23 is our first full post-covid year of book circulations in the library. Our investment in Graphic Novels and Sophisticated Picture Books have reaped rewards in increased borrowing and interest from our student population and the use of picture books in teaching and learning.

This year we also separated Humor and Sports from our Realistic Fiction section which resulted in increased visibility of these books that are high interest to many of our sporty patrons and those who like a fun read. Science Fiction got a boost this year as a result of our visiting author Neal Shusterman whose Scythe and Unwind series were our more popular books all year. 

A number of initiatives bore fruit this year. Firstly an increase in the number of high interest memoirs and biographies geared to middle school and young adults resulted in higher borrowings in that category. The higher number of graphic novels and manga has been mentioned above.

Significantly higher collaboration with departments and curation of books for use in research and checked out to classes as well as investment in newer, relevant and attractive nonfiction texts increased our borrowings in that era. Teachers and students are enjoying a return to text-based research. 

The library team led a conversation about how to grow readers during ASD's weekly Talk Tuesday event.

Architecture students enjoying some Lego time.

Honors English 10 students sharing picture books.

AP Human Geography students shared the picture books they wrote for their population/migration unit with grade 5 students. 

The visiting authors with the library team

We were happy to reinstate author visits this year, with Tracey Baptiste working with the elementary students, and Neal Shusterman working with the middle and high school students.

When surveyed about what they learned from Mr. Shusterman's visit, the high school students responded that they learned about the writing process, particularly about character- and world-building. They said his visit inspired them to read and write more and work hard to achieve their dreams, and they were thankful for his frank discussions about mental health. 

After years of COVID restrictions, we were happy to welcome MS and HS back to the library without extra restrictions. It was not unusual to have over 100 students in the library at a time, working on different things. Here's a breakdown of visits that were scheduled. It doesn't include the individual visits during study block, lunch, WIN, break, or before and after school.

Middle School Librarian Nadine Bailey joined ASD for the 2022-23 school year, and she's already had an amazing impact! Nadine has been behind many of the physical updates in the library, and she's a master at creating eye-catching displays. She is working closely with the MS English language arts department to get kids reading, and with the social studies and science departments to get them researching. Nadine is a pro when it comes to Libguides (the library platform where you're reading this report), and has helped us all elevate our skills. 

Kathy has been at ASD for 11 years, and this year she moved to the library team to be the new elementary librarian. We're so glad she did! Kathy taught PreK, K1, G1, and G2 this year.  She started community events like the "First Fridays" monthly live music events and a poetry celebration. Kathy's knowledge of the workings of ASD and her familiarity with the ASD community have been real advantages for the library team.

NoodleTools was introduced in the last academic year as a way to help student manage their research and to encourage ethical and systematic usage of resources. This year was our first full year using the tool. With the intensive introductions by teacher librarians and take-up by subject teachers, between May 2022 and April 2023 the number of unique users increased 83% and the number of return log-ins by students by 550% which shows us significant positive response by the community. 2,144 new projects were created by students. 

Libguides (what you are reading now is on a Libguide) is a unique resource to enable schools to curate, communicate and display resources available to their community. 

ASD libraries currently have 81 unique guides which have received over 30,000 views in the last year, from within and outside our community.  They help showcase academically reliable resources and our paid subscriptions, and are a place to share student exemplars.

The libraries held a first-ever used book swap and sale in February. ASD community members were invited to donate high-quality used books (in exchange for coupons) advance of the sale, which were then set up in the Gate 1 courtyard by student volunteers. Throughout the course of the 3-day sale, over 1000 books changed hands within our community, over 800 books were donated to Old Books for New Eyes, and almost 3000 AED was donated to the Room to Read student organization.

The Gate 1 Courtyard was alive with the happy chatter of students buying books for a week in December. The fair continued into the evenings as a backdrop for holiday concerts and celebrations.

14 of our top 25 titles in MSHS were written by our visiting author Neal Shusterman, a clear indication of the power that a visiting author has to promote and shape reading. Scythe and Unwind were the top two of his titles. 

Students also enjoyed books that had been made into movies or Netflix shows such as "The Summer I turned Pretty" and "One of us is lying" 

Mengzhen M (class of 2024) created this beautiful piece for the MSHS Library.